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porro or roof? (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter smallblueplanet
- Start date
boyinthebush
Registered Loser
I am thinking of buying a pair of Bushenll H20 and am currently pondering the porro/roof debate. There's only £20 between them at Warehouse Express and my brain is stuck in a circle of "are the roofs better or worse for the extra £20"... has anyone used either of these or ideally both to compare?
I understand the porros got a good write-up in Bird Watching... I missed that (being a casual buyer)... don't surpose anyone could scan the review and mail it could they??
Cheers fellows.
p.s. I'm probably looking at the 10x42
I understand the porros got a good write-up in Bird Watching... I missed that (being a casual buyer)... don't surpose anyone could scan the review and mail it could they??
Cheers fellows.
p.s. I'm probably looking at the 10x42
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Re the roof vs porro design -
I find one great benefit in porro vs roof is the enormous depth of field of the porro, which leads to very little focusing and a much more natural 3d image, not to mention the quick response between seeing something with the naked eye, and having a focused bin view of the same.
Is this a general benefit of porro over roof, or an isolated case I have observed?
I find one great benefit in porro vs roof is the enormous depth of field of the porro, which leads to very little focusing and a much more natural 3d image, not to mention the quick response between seeing something with the naked eye, and having a focused bin view of the same.
Is this a general benefit of porro over roof, or an isolated case I have observed?
oathkeeper
Well-known member
mike,
I'm pretty sure that the DOF is a general property of the porro prisms. I think it's due to the greater distance between the two objectives. Of that I'm not sure. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm pretty sure that the DOF is a general property of the porro prisms. I think it's due to the greater distance between the two objectives. Of that I'm not sure. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Jay Turberville
Well-known member
boyinthebush said:
Leif already touched on this but maybe not in an explicit way. It is cheaper to make a binocular with a high quality porro prism than to make one with a high quality roof prism. The roof prism by design creates a phase problem. Top quality roofs use a special coating that corrects this. But this simply brings them up to where a porro prism already is. Leif mentione reflective coatings and alignment issues as well and I'll assume he is correct in this. So as a general rule of thumb, for a given price point, the porro prism binocular is likely to be a bit better optically - or at least the prism component is likely to be.
So given no other information, I'd assume a porro binocular that was only £20 cheaper than an otherwise similar roof probably is not quite as good optically. Of course it would be better to get specific information on the models rather than to use general rules of thumb.
I did a quick look on the Bushnell website and for a given magnification, all of the porro prism bins had a wider FOV (excepting the compact porros). And with the exception of the compact porros, they also had larger objective lenses. All of the prisms in this line use the less expensive BK7 glass and the roofs are listed as NOT using the phase correcting coating. So I think its fair to say that in this particular line that the prism sections of the roofs probably won't perform as well overall as the prism section of the porros. I'm not sure what you can assume about the rest of the optics except that the 8x42s should give a wider and brighter view. The conventional porros also have more eye relief. If I had to make a choice without doing further research, I'd go for the 8x42 conventional porros if I was looking for the best view. But its probably wiser to look for some specific review information and to also hold and use the bins first.
alan_rymer
Well-known member
I know the Birdwatching Mags reviews have been panned, but,
Last year they reviewed the H2O Porro 8x42. This got a best buy, clear & very bright.
Earlier this year they did the H2O Roof 8x42. This was called dull and disappointing!.
Make of it what you will!. Try them both!.
Last year they reviewed the H2O Porro 8x42. This got a best buy, clear & very bright.
Earlier this year they did the H2O Roof 8x42. This was called dull and disappointing!.
Make of it what you will!. Try them both!.
Doug Greenberg
Well-known member
Bill Atwood said:
Just to muddy the waters a bit: I have looked through these Leicas and also Nikon SE porros in a side-by-side test, and I MUCH preferred the Nikons. Different strokes, different folks.
Doug Greenberg
Well-known member
smallblueplanet said:If thats a link to Nikon SE 8x32's its not working.........
I think you must be in their pay
My argument here is that when you buy the very best binoculars you can possibly afford you get "returns" EVERY TIME you look at a bird! That's thousands and thousands and thousands of instances of definite benefit. Your binocs are your basic tool for birding; splurge there and then cut back on those things are aren't as fundamental.
As with many things in life, once you have used really good binocs, it's hard to go back to ones that aren't quite as good. Ignorance is bliss, etc.
Tero
Retired
mike60 said:
That is sort of what I see as well. I have both porros and roofs, and can use both. If you buy under $100 binoculars, the safer bet is porros, they are harder to screw up designing. But overall I prefer roofs. My hand has gotten used to holding them, and I can pretty much line up the binos close to the bird even without looking. Its a hand feel thing for me.
I am becoming a porro fan after buying a used Nikon 8x32 SE. It really is like being 8x closer. (Maybe I should get a job promoting Nikon kit?) Are they worth £440? Well if you are like me then you will find that the more you bird, the more you notice optical faults. I want to concentrate on the birds rather than the defects of my optics. So the answer is that they are well worth it. If they last at least 10 years, that's only £44 a year, or less than £1 a week, which is an absolute a bargain. Turn them on the night sky, and you'll be even more convinced. For comparison a colleague pays £1500 a year to tap a small ball around a nicely manicured lawn.
Optically porros tend to be better at a given price point, and many top roof prism binoculars costing ~£800 have far too much chromatic aberration for my tastes. But it's what suits you that matters. If you find that you are more comfortable with a given design, then go for it. There's no point having something you don't like just because someone you don't know says that another model is better. The Nikon 8x36 Sporter's on offer at Warehouse Express for a bargain price seem to be getting good comments!
Optically porros tend to be better at a given price point, and many top roof prism binoculars costing ~£800 have far too much chromatic aberration for my tastes. But it's what suits you that matters. If you find that you are more comfortable with a given design, then go for it. There's no point having something you don't like just because someone you don't know says that another model is better. The Nikon 8x36 Sporter's on offer at Warehouse Express for a bargain price seem to be getting good comments!
scampo said:
Steve: In a simple camera lens the DOF is a function of the F ratio and the image magnification. Thus DOF increases as the lens is stopped down, and decreases when you move really close i.e. in the macro range.
In a binocular things is a wee bit more complex. If we consider an 8x40 binocular i.e. one having a magnification of 8x and an objective of 40mm, then we could conceivably have the two following cases:
Product 1 has objectives and eyepieces with focal lengths of 200mm and 25mm. (200/25 = 8) The objectives are F5 = 200/40.
Product 2 has objectives and eyepieces with focal lengths of 160m and 20mm. (160/20 = 8) The objectives are F4 = 160/40.
Thus the objectives of product 1 have a larger F ratio and hence product 1 will give greater DOF. (At least I think that is how it works. There's an awful lot of mis-understanding about DOF in binoculars.)
FWIW the Nikon 8x32 has significantly more DOF than both the Nikon 8x32 HG and the Leica 8x32 BN. That suggests that it has longer focal length objectives. I suspect that were a roof prism binocular to be made with the same objectives and eyepieces as the Nikon 8x32 SE, it would be much longer as the roof prisms give less folding of the optical path. Porro prisms allow a greater degree of folding because a large part of the optical path is folded sideways. The Nikon 8x32 SE is quite wide! Therefore designers of roof prism binoculars are forced to use objectives with a small F ratio to get a compact form. This might also explain why roof prism binoculars esp. those in the 8x32 range seem to my eyes to have a lot of off-axis chromatic aberration.
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prairiemerlin
registered guy
I recently got 10x50 pair of binocs that are roof prism. I don'd have trouble holding them steady, and they are quite tough, as they have been used in drizzles and have taken some minor bumps. They are probably not the best bincoulars in the world but I'm happy with them.
Scampo, the first time I looked through 10x SE nikon porros in a shop in Japan on a whim, I was truly amazed. I wanted to swap my zeiss 10x roofs for them immediately. I went to a large store in Sydney and asked the 'snickering' assistant to compare the same 2 models. When he looked himself, he became very quiet and said this must be a 'well kept secret'. No one seemed to be aware of them as a serious contender to zeiss/leica/swaro. When I finally bought the 8x32SE, I found that although they were very good right away, it took me some time to appreciate how good the view really was. It was discovery by experience in a variety of situations rather than instant...... for me anyway. I would certainly not want them as my only bins...they arent perfect, but i am even growing to like their little 'flaws'. It all adds to their mystique
Jay Turberville
Well-known member
Doug Greenberg said:
A few weeks ago I read the book, "Kingbird Highway" by Ken Kaufman. Ken spent a year hitching rides all over North America. He was attempting to set a record or recorded sightings in a year and had an absurdly small budget. As I recall, he had an inexpensive pair of department store porros that he had at one time painted gold for some reason when he was even younger.
Only the individual can truly answer what is the appropriate gear and whether it is worth the price. I'm sure its useful to hear other people's thoughts and their reasons for their choices, but that only goes so far. There are no clearly right answers.
Its a world of compromises and we have to pick those compromises that we think will work best for us. Money spent on one thing is money not available for another. And since we are all in different situations (financially and otherwise) to some degree, I think its pretty nifty that we live in a world where you can actually buy a functional pair of binoculars for around $20 - or you can easily spend 30 times that much for a pair that is an optical marvel. That's pretty cool.
Leif said:
A very good point. I think the effect is even enhanced by the eyepiece (short objective -> short eyepiece), which is like a macro objective with an F ratio close to 1 (20/20). Close-up photographers surely know how lenses with large aperture behave with very short distances.
Ilkka
jebir
Yoda Eagle
iporali said:
Right!
Note that "SE" means "Superior Eyepiece" in "Nikon 8x32 SE".
I have the impression that most binocular manufacturers have spent most of their efforts during the last decades on trying to make roofs catch up with porros optically. The roofs managed to pass the porros by using all means of technology - to any price - until Nikon revisited the porro design and gave it magnesium body, BAK-4 prisms, and eyepieces of the same caliber as the best roofs.
My perception of the standings between state-of-the-art (usually the most expensive) porro vs. roof binoculars are:
± equally high optical quality
± equal weight
Porros:
+ better DOF
+ better stereo sight
+ 1/2 price
- not water and fog proof (although splash proof)
Roofs:
+ water and fog proof
- shorter DOF
- less stereo sight
- twice as expensive
Fashion and shape are non-measurable matters of taste.
My formula: By buying a pair of Nikon 10x42 SE CF, I saved approximately £500, which then allowed me to get a second hand high end spotting scope within my original budget for a pair of state-of-the-art 10x42 roofs.
My 2 "x"
Jens.
